With little left to do in the way of sabotaging the company, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)'s CEO Jerry Yang has decided to step down.
In traditional Yang fashion, he sent a mostly-lowercase email to employees yesterday (or "all yahoos"), saying he'd be helping out in the search for a successor, after which he will resume his previous role as Chief Yahoo: "all of you know that I have always, and will always bleed purple. i will always do what I think is right for this great company," he wrote.
After the year he's had at Yahoo, that won't be the way history is written for Yang, who is often blamed for destroying a deal with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) that could have more than doubled its share price. At the Web 2.0 Summit in early November, Yang tried to shove this blame onto Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who he said walked away from the deal when Yahoo was "ready to negotiate."
Speaking at the Summit two weeks ago -- and perhaps in an attempt to write his own obituary before the bloggers could -- Yang described himself as a stand-up guy with no regrets, who did what was right for Yahoo by accomplishing its destiny as a "platform company."
If you're able to look at what's happened inside Yahoo, yes, there's been a lot of change -- people coming and leaving -- but plans which we were trying to execute against are being done in a way I'm extremely proud of, in the sense that we're rewiring Yahoo. Creating Yahoo into a platform company -- that was a dream I felt I could achieve by being CEO. That's somewhat lost underneath all the external issues.
I don't regret any minute of what happened even though it's not the most fun thing to go through. Perhaps I can only talk about it because I've been there the whole time. It's a part of me.
Touching. But it's hard to shed a tear for Yang -- number 524 on the Forbes billionaire list -- who oversaw the loss of tens of billions of dollars in Yahoo's market cap and thousands of layoffs.
Jerry Yang at the Web 2.0 Summit on November 5, 2008. Click the photo to start the slide show.
I'd say both. Yahoo's stock is still down, and it probably won't stabilize or go up again until a new CEO is chosen. The stock will probably go up then... and go right back down if it becomes apparent that Microsoft isn't going to re-emerge with a bid.
I think that a CEO has to satisfy in general the stakeholders.
We can assume that Yang did not make the best decision for the shareholders, unless the Yahoo stock will recover.
We can see that for the employees it does not make really a big difference if they are laid-off after the acquisition or now.
But for the users/customers what would be the right decisions?
First, both companies MSFT and Yahoo! suffer under big innovation inertia. Where are the great new ideas which can attract million of users and bring new revenues?
So, Microsoft is interested in the search engine from Yahoo. Does the quality of search results between both make such a big difference? I think that Yahoo search strongly profits through the switching cost of their e-mail service and therefore a lot of people use Yahoo for their services. Microsoft profits from their implementation into IE.
However, how can both try to steal market share from Google, if they would combine both. Is it not a subjective point, if I use MSN as "Good Morning" platform or Yahoo? How many would be willing to read their news at MSN who read them currently and Yahoo?
For me as user, I think that it is the best how it is currently. The Shareholders are not in a good mood, and like Carl Icahn told me once, you need a big pocket and a lot of gold somewhere. But they can only wait.
And Yahoo? It maybe dieing slowly, or it will slim down and reinvent itself.
I agree with Nicole in that moving into a business development role was not a good fit for Jerry Yang.
When the markets are growing, coming up with the latest innovations in technology creates new opportunities. I believe this is how Jerry Yang was successful in developing Yahoo and growing the business originally. But when the markets are changing and becoming more competitive due to maturity and total market shrinkage, it requires a different set of skills in order to remain competitive.
He is a visionary and knows, as stated, how to be the Yahoo in Chief. He has and can make a significant contribution in this area. Yahoo, however, needs to have a CEO that will examine how best to position Yahoo in technology, innovative pricing and new business models, with new partnerships. This will position Yahoo to better compete and create a better fit with the markets. The result can be a solid company.
OK. So who should the replacement be? Yahoo said they'll be looking both inside and outside the company. Can Yahoo be saved at this point? Its stock went up after Yang stepped down, and now it's back down again. Not looking good.
I feel sorry for Jerry Yang but then again I don't.
The price of stock, the offering of a buyout, and other contingencies is totally unpredictable. To blame Yang for poor judgement or blame for anything in the realm of financial speculation is folly.
On the other hand, do I believe any person of whatever intelligence or luck deserves millions of dollars? Nope. So Jerry, take your money and run. Perhaps you can put some energy into what to do with all that money and make it grow to the benefit of those with of lessor rank...most all of us.
Yang may have been part of the founding and formative years of Yahoo! but again he must not be fit to be a CEO. Being in the top management post is also a talent, a gift. Not everybody is capable of doing it even if you are one of those who, or even the, one who started a company or establishment. I agree with you, Ms Nicole, that probably he would have been better remembered if he had not taken on that CEO job in the first place.
And hopefully he does not accept the position that Schmidt refused to accept hahaha.
This is just more evidence for the Death of the Portal. Look at the Big Internet 4 -- Yahoo, Amazon, Google, E-bay. They're all hurting. Why? Because they don't create...they are mere toll-takers. They are the dreaded Portal.
Look at Microsoft. Windows is also a portal. The problem for portals is that the Web has fractionalized into a myriad of tiny services where one size doesn't fit all. In fact, I find it easier to skip between the blogs of my choice than to "log in to a central server" and do everything the same way.
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We're live on IE Radio with Naomi Baron, author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, and professor of linguistics and language at American University.
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